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Is anybody else watching Louis C.K.'s Horace and Pete (2016)? It must be some of the best writing and acting and I hope it doesn't get overlooked by awards this season for its unusual distribution model.

I agree completely about Horace and Pete. The show is really excellent but it feels closer to live filmed theater than anything else (each hourish long episode even has an actual intermission). Though it's really not like anything else I've ever seen before. It's shot on standing sets with relatively simple coverage and serviceable lighting like a traditional multi-camera sitcom, but it's not a sitcom. The writing aspires to the literary quality and depth of feeling and meaning you'd get from a serious 20th century playwright -- and it's about that good pretty consistently. Yet it's also serialized, like so many of the most compelling shows of the recent television renaissance. I've tried to describe Horace and Pete to friends as "a theater novel for Internet television," but that doesn't really fully get it either.

The cast is excellent across the board and surprising (Alan Alda, Steven Buscemi, Aidy Bryant, and Jessica Lange are particularly great). The storytelling feels both rigorously appropriate to the more theatrical actor- and performance-centric approach and just loose enough to digress within its own self-imposed limits in some of the same ways that made Louie feel so fresh and alive (I'm thinking, for instance, of moments like the dating app scene between two minor characters in Episode 2). All that and it has an original theme song by Paul Simon and it's available only directly from Louis C.K.'s own website. He's completely self-financing, producing and distributing the whole series.

There was an episode of Louie last season where he went to a play with his daughter. I remember thinking then that the glimpses of the fake play they see seemed interesting and convincingly written. This must have been a part of himself he's wanted to explore for some time. Anyway, I'm glad he's finally doing it and I think everyone should give this a try. Who knew that the best undiscovered playwright in America would turn out to be Louis C.K.?

What is the Horace and Pete distribution model, exactly? How should I be looking for it, and are all the episodes out yet?

I think you have to pay to download each episode from Louis CK's website?

warren oates said it was exclusively available on his website in his post.

I'm sure I'll find all the information I need re: how often it's released, how much of it there is, etc over there then. Thank you!

I try to buy almost everything Louis puts out on his site to support my favorite comic directly, but I admit I haven't gotten around to this yet. He's releasing it week by week and pricing it per episode, so I'm trying to hold out until he's finished (with at least this first series/season/cycle) and might package all the episodes together for $25 or so; if I keep hearing how good it is, however, I might not be able to hold out much longer.

The 5th episode ended with an "end of act 1" title card. I'm not sure how many acts we are to expect.

It's looking like episode 10 will be the likely conclusion of the series, making it an even two acts of 5 episodes each.

I've been completely bowled over by the show. Episode 9 is probably the high water mark of the series (and an absolute emotional gut punch), although there have been many remarkable episodes throughout. The show has a somewhat uneven quality to it but that is, for me, a sign of its strength insofar as it's willing to take big risks that almost always pay off. The cast is amazing, so many incredible performers being given an opportunity here to shine. Louis himself has shown himself to be a vastly improved performer from where he started out a few years ago.

The breakneck production methods of the show - shooting late in the week, editing overnight and then releasing Saturdays, complete with references to events occurring within the last 72 hours or so, has also been a treat, giving the whole thing a sense of immediacy and urgency. While I would assume most of the major narrative beats were hashed out by Louis in advance of beginning, it is also clear the show is alive to what is happening in our world right now in a way that no other dramatic series can even begin to approach. The quote at the end of episode 9 in particular (coming at the culmination of what is already an absolutely stunning episode) left me a wreck for hours afterwards (I won't mention the author of said quote so as not to dull the impact).

I really look forward to more people discovering and talking about this show. I must say, however, it has been so refreshing to be able to view the entire series (almost) outside any kind of hype/press campaign with the attendant thinkpiece/same-day-review/Twitter snark bubble being brought to bear on something people are told they "should" be watching. Instead the show has been allowed to find its own audience, which I suspect is somewhat of a niche, and it feels like this incredible secret we've been let in on that the rest of the world will catch up to eventually. I really cannot say enough superlative things about this show, as you can tell.

Louis CK is millions in debt from the production of this show

I'm two episodes in and it is emotionally devastating and apparently only gets moreso. I hear that opening guitar riff and am jello the rest of the time. The first episode was perfect, the second was a little of a step down, but I can't wait to see what else Horace and Pete has in store for me.

During this same interview, CK mentioned that Mike Leigh's TV production of his play Abigail's Party was what inspired the "frequency" of Horace and Pete, and that he essentially begged Joe Pesci to do it (going as far as spending a few days with Pesci and getting direct inspiration for some of Uncle Pete's dialogue from him), but Pesci was nervous that it'd result in too much exposure if it was well-received and would take up too much of his time.

Amazing conversation with Maron on production of H&P. Big spoilers in it, so beware.

For those who missed this excellent series, it's now streaming on Hulu.